“They tear living people open, believing the soul they crave is inside. They eat the insides first, where they think the soul resides. They drink the blood, fearing the soul might leak away. When they aren’t satisfied because they haven’t gotten what they want, they strip all the meat from the bones, devouring it, trying to find and consume the soul in the still warm flesh.

“If a group of them catches a living person, they will all tear into them, competing for the soul. A cluster of half people will reduce a living person to bones in short order. It’s horrifying. The dead are not even able to be identified because the half people will use their teeth to peel the face right off the skull and eat it. They even suck the brains out of the skull.”

“And no one anticipated this?” Merritt asked.

“I did, but like I said, no one would listen. When it didn’t happen at first, and everything seemed fine, they were all the more convinced that I was wrong.

“The evolution in their nature took a little time, but when it happened, it happened quickly. They attacked people in the palace, feeding like wolves off the living who were trying desperately to control them. It was chaos for a time.

“That was when I saw my chance and escaped. For all I know, those in charge may believe that I was eaten, as were a number of the gifted involved in the project. It was a terrifying and very bloody time.”

“And this is still going on?” Merritt asked.

“Yes, but I think they’ve managed to gain some degree of control over the situation. They would have been able to do that, to some extent at least, because they have altered the Grace in order to use the spirits of these people.”

Merritt frowned. “Use their spirits? How can they control spirits in the underworld beyond the veil?”

“When they take the souls of living people to create the half people, those souls are not allowed to go to the spirit world. The spirits of the dead they also use are pulled back from the world of the dead as well.

“These spirits are kept trapped between realms. Unable to get back to the underworld, they sometimes drift back in this direction and haunt this plane of existence.

“When I left, the gifted were attempting to channel the need to eat the living into the need to instead eat the flesh of the enemy. That way, rather than having to try to find a way to counter such a powerful drive, they instead redirected it to serve their objective. That makes them an even more terrifying weapon. The half people are hard to put down, and if they get near your people and get the chance, they will rip them open, eating them from the inside out, trying to consume their souls.”